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While Dhruva stared at her with empathy, as she broke down, saying that she was miserable carrying the cross of her shameful past, he told her that if only she knew Pravar’s true character, she would realize that he was not worth her thought any more. As she looked at him with hope, he unraveled Pravar’s criminal mind, etched by Radha and sketched by Shakeel, which prompted her to say that she felt wretched for having carried on with such a character. Moved by the radiance of her visage in her repentance, as he took her into his arms, driven by her sense of emptiness, she sank into him, and he told her that she better treated it all as a bad dream and forgot about it. Smug in his arms, as she confessed to him in remorse that she reduced herself to be Pravar’s accomplice in crime as well, he said that was understandable; but shamed by her recollections, she withdrew herself, but goaded by him to off-load her guilt, she briefed him about her life and crimes with Pravar.
By the time he kidnapped her, having splurged all the booty in wooing Natya, he was already a broke, and with that farce of a ransom having ended in the confiscation of the stolen cars as well, he had nothing left to fall back upon. While he was content to live on her doles in the beginning, after he won her over, he came to seek more and more from her, but Ranjit, as if on cue, curtailed her access to the family purse, and that forced her to play ball with Pravar at extortions. Why, it was her idea that with right tactics, they could make the corrupt to part with part of their ill-gotten wealth, with none going to town about it. While he felt that they might conduct fake tax raids with forged identities, she reckoned that it would only land them behind the bars sooner than later as someone or the other was bound to call their bluff. When Pravar said what to make of her non-starter of an idea, she said that with her brains and his brawn, they could yet make it workable; with her contacts in the department, she would be able to prepare a list of tax evaders and profile their character for him to pick up the faint hearted from amongst them. Still if someone were to act out of character, yet there was no way he would go to the police to report against him, and if only he would keep his greed art bay, it might as well be a smooth sailing for him.